Making sense from non sense.

Author: Bhavneet Singh

I’m coming in hot through the cobwebs on this blog. Thanks for the thunderous applause. (Trust me, I heard it).

But why am I here? Because, cricket.

Growing up, I had no idea what Pakistan was. I just heard about it somewhere and I was told to hate it (not exactly but you know what I mean). It was few years later in a geography class that I got know that Pakistan is a country right next to ours. By this point I’d been hating on them for three straight years.

And that’s the thing I guess. We all just have memories of hating Pakistan. Why? Because they give us multiple FUCKEN REASONS! THAT’S WHY! *Trishul awakens inside*

The only fond memory of Pakistan in my head is of this ad campaign that was on TV when Pakistan was touring India and Indo-Pak ties were at their strongest. Friendship was so good between these two countries that there was a bus running from Delhi to Lahore *blushes in Guru Randhawa*

Also there was this train transporting cotton, but I heard some guy named Tara Singh set it on fire because he was escaping Pakistan with his wife Amisha Patel.

I didn’t want anyone to miss the reference.

So this ad had Rahul Dravid entering the room with Parathas. And everyone went ‘arre why are there parathas stuck on a wall?’ ‘lolololololololololol.’ (That’s how dressing rooms exist in my head.)

No, Dravid enters the room with parathas and as we all know Rahul Dravid is a Kannadiga and parathas naturally are authentic Karnataka food. Ganguly is like ‘hey, ye paratha mere liye hai?’

And Dravid goes ‘nai. Ye Inzi bhai ke liye’. And at this point in the ad, Kaif and Yuvi also make their appearance. Yuvi goes ‘Ye hum baant ke khaenge, chain se.’ To which Kaif goes, ‘Aman se’ and I’m not making this up, the next thing that happens is a white pigeon flies out of Kaif’s hand – inside the dressing room. Little did they know that they both would have to face cancer at some point in the future. (Kaif got career cancer, it didn’t survive).

And that ad is the fondest memory I have of Pakistan. That and coke studio (OMG QURAT-UL-AIN BALOUCH!!).

The alarm goes off at 6 am in the morning. But it doesn’t really matter because I was up all night staring at my phone waiting for the alarm to go off. Insomnia, mad amounts of caffeine and acute depression, all played their part really well.

If you spoke to any of my friends then, they’d tell you a story of ‘how I was taking my life down the drain with stupid decisions’, and they couldn’t be more right. Life really could’ve gone anywhere from there, but stand up comedy happened.

I’ve been meaning to write this blog for a long time so here it is.

I remember my first experience of watching stand up comedy was on this TV channel called Star One that doesn’t even exist now. Raju Srivastav, in a brown suit, was doing an impression of Shahrukh Khan buying mangoes in a crowded Delhi market. When I saw that, I wasn’t sure how it worked. How someone could just stand there and say stuff while people lost their shit. Especially that shit fuck Navjot Singh Siddhu who is single-handedly responsible for new kinds of sardar stereotypes being born, as if the already existing ones weren’t good enough.

Even when I started doing stand up comedy, I thought it was all about telling jokes and being that funny guy on stage. I’d be lying if I said that fame wasn’t on the agenda. To be honest, fame was the only agenda.

But after numerous bombings and 3 killings maybe, ISIS is set to launch a counter offensive against the allied forces trying to take over the strategic town of Mosul.

Sorry. :p

But bombings teach you a lot. From being an egoistic prick, the journey of self-acceptance began. When you tank in front of 30 random people at a coffee shop for the first time, you think you’ll come back better the next time. But when the trend continues for two straight months, you reach a point where you say, ‘Fuck dude, I know nothing.’

That I think is the day you’ve taken your first step towards becoming a stand up comic. And in the process you end up becoming a better person. Or at least I did. To a neutral (and to many comics) stand up comedy might just be going up on stage and saying/doing funny shit. But to me it is a journey of accepting your flaws and insecurities.

We all have an image of how we are as people in our heads. Which in most cases is actually very different to the person we are. Like pulling in that belly fat a little in front of the mirror, covering that pimple in the selfie, or behaving like a nice guy when you actually are a cunt inside. All our lives we run from this because we are afraid to accept who we are as people.

Tanking in open mics, however, takes that fear away from you. Because when you’ve made a fool out of yourself in front of random people again and again, you lose the fear of making the fool out of yourself because guess what, now you’ve accepted you’re a fool. Once you’ve accepted that you have flaws, you are no longer afraid to face the real you. And instead of hiding from it in every way possible, you see yourself and start making amends.

It’s been 18 months since this journey began. I’m not a stand up comic yet. I’m just a guy that goes on stage and tells people average jokes. I might become a stand up comic in a few years maybe. But in these 18 months, I’ve learnt more about myself than in the rest of the 21 years (which for all I know might be 70 percent of my total life) of my life.

I cannot speak for my jokes but I sure am a better person now than when I started off with stand up comedy. And for that, I’d like to say, thank you, stand up comedy. 🙂

The Islamic State, popularly known as ISIS or ISIL, has risen in power substantially over the last three years and is now the “free world’s” biggest enemy. The organisation has such a radical approach that even the Taliban disassociated itself from it. And mind you, the Taliban are a group of people who did not mind planes full of people flying into the World Trade Center.

Saddam Hussain was an interesting story. Bin Laden was a nice little twist in the history of the world. A major villain figure that emerges every once in a while and gives us all a story to tell for a decade till another one rises. Laden was in the mold of the drug cartels. The only difference was that his kills were recorded and reported live. Also his kills were more aesthetic (if I can use that word) for the news channels to show. Because if we look at the numbers, the cartels have claimed more lives in the first three episodes of Narcos than the entire 9/11 attacks.

We had our own little villains too. The Indian Mujahideen and a bunch of other clowns who came from across the border to mess with us. Our financial capital (and also the city with the most annoying climate) was under siege for three days. Taj fell. It was reclaimed. But in the process, the terrorists managed to leave an impression. The only thing worse than the 26/11 attacks was Ram Gopal Varma’s movie about the 26/11 attacks.

But ISIS, it is a different cattle of fish. And the reason I call them a cattle of fish and not any other animal because they are at the lowest rung of evolution. Their brains are as small as the fish. Now ISIS is no one-decade villain story. I think ISIS is the story of the century. Or maybe, ISIS is the prequel to the story of the century. Just like World War I was a prequel to Hitler’s madness.

Of all the organisations that have threatened a white man’s idea of world peace in the recent past, ISIS is the only one that has the potential to reach the maximum. And there are two reasons I say that.

Till date, every other terror organisation in the world spoke of bringing doom to a certain section of people whom they disagreed with. ISIS has gone one step further. It has promised people an Islamic caliphate without boundaries. They’ve provided people with an illusion of a working system. [Click on this to know more about ISIS’ borders policy]

All the terror organisations, in my limited understanding of the topic, have tried to unify the Muslims of the world against a common enemy, the infidels. They tried to appeal to the Muslims of the world by presenting them with a very radical form of Islam. They obviously failed because the majority of the Muslims in the world – even in the areas worst hit by these organisations – refused to believe in this form of Islam. What ISIS has done is that they have turned the tables. Instead of asking/requesting the Muslims of the world to unite, they are commanding them to. And every country that has dared to speak against this command has suffered.

The second point is what terrifies me.

Numbers never lie.

Initially, ISIS had a familiar attack pattern. When it first broke into the world scene in 2013, most of its attacks were in Syria. This was done with a motive of establishing a base at Raqqa, which it proclaimed will be the capital of the Caliphate.

Then they did what every terrorist organisation from the middle east does. Attack the west. Throughout 2014, all their targets were Christian dominated countries. But where’s the fun in that? We’ve all seen that, right?

2015 saw them turn towards whom they claim to be their own. Majority of the attacks in this year were in Muslim countries and in the Muslim dominated areas of other countries. France was feeling left out so it pulled itself into the picture voluntarily with Charlie Hebdo.

This particular trend of bombing their own has continued into 2016. Libya, Iraq, Turkey, Banladesh, Belgium, Indinasia and Syira have seen the worst of ISIS this year. And if that isn’t a clear indication of what they intend to do, they went one step forward. They attacked the holy city of Medina in the month Ramzan. Here is a list of all ISIS attacks substantiating this particular pattern.

This attack, I think, was a statement. A statement to the world, to the Muslim world specifically. A statement of power, a statement of authority and a statement of the kind of dark days that await us.

From where I see it, all ISIS wants to do is to get the Muslim world to submit them power and then use that power to wipe out everyone who doesn’t believe in their ideology off the face of this earth. And people who say stuff like ‘all Muslims are terrorists’ are just helping ISIS in doing so.

Because now isn’t a time to blame religious ideologies. Now isn’t the time to deepen religious divides. We’ll have a lot time for that later on. If anything, this is the time we stand together as a race and fight this evil that knocks on our door. An evil that is trying to get the loyalty of the world’s second largest religion. An evil that threatens our society with a holocaust like event. Now is the time we stand together, leave our religious divide and send a message to these sons of bitches who want to establish a medieval caliphate in the world through the power of weapons that they would have never been able to make from their caves.

And once we’re done defeating the ISIS, then we’ll start killing each other again in the name of religion. But let’s stand and fight ISIS to protect our right of having more religions in the world so that we can kill each other for ages to come. Let us not let ISIS take this from us.

It’s been a while since I wrote a blog. Not because I had other shit to do, or I’ve been too busy. It’s just that with every blog that I wrote, my chances of getting laid were going down. Although not writing a blog for a while didn’t help either. But I feel good in my head. I’ve eliminated the major possibility. It’s like my placebo.

So I’ve been doing open mics for a while now. 10 months. It’s been fun. But apart from the jokes that I say on stage, there are certain things that happen on and off stage that fascinate me. Now to me, it is very funny. So I thought I’ll start blogging about those things.

Now, why can’t I write it in a diary? Because it is not fucken 1945! Any person you meet in this day and age who writes in a diary is a fucken psychopath. There is no way a sane man writes weird stuff about his day in a diary now. Because these days we write a lot of it in a book. Facebook.

Moving on!

I figured I’ll blog about it because as of now, my blog is as good as being private. No body could give enough of fuck to read it. And I say ‘as of now’ because in my head, I’m the hero of my own film. So that means some day there will be readers here and I’ll have a proper blog following.

So every now and then, I’ll just write shit that I found funny about a day on/off the stage and you decide if it is funny to you or not. And once you decide that, don’t bother telling me about it because I’m not a place in life where I can handle hope or sorrow.

So last night, I was at an open mic. It was random as fuck because there was no one there in a bar. Of course there was no one there, it was a rainy Tuesday night. The kind of night in vigilante movies where the villain would do something extremely fucked up and then the hero will have to save it all.

So anyway, 10th on the list, I get up on stage. It’s just five audience members now (a couple and a group of three) and about 15 comedians. I was doing some random shit about how a group of meat eaters attacked a vegan eatery and threw chicken at the people eating there. In my head, I pictured people throwing their daughters at me, ‘ki bhai wah kya boley ho tum.’

Reality, for obvious reasons, was a little different. The couple just kept staring at me like I said some shit that is deeply offensive. There was more sadness in between and then I went to a joke about circumcision in the Mughal era.

Offense virus hit them. They picked up their things and moved to the outside area where happy people who have better things to do were listening to live music. I was cool with it. At least they did not spit on my face before they left. Because trust me, that is a genuine fear I have. That people who don’t like my performance will walk out in the middle of the performance and then take a detour till the stage, spit on my face and go away. It’s fucken gross but I’ve seen that shit in my dreams. Very weird dreams.

Anyway so they walk out. Once I’m done with the performance I just step in the outside section to get some air. The couple who walked out were now sitting with people and laughing and shit. The moment they saw me, they started pointing at me and telling something to the other three they were chilling with.

I continue to walk away but all of them kept looking at me as I walked across the floor to the washroom. They repeated the entire thing when I walked back from the washroom to the section where the open mic was going on.

I honestly think becoming the Joker from The Dark Knight is a little bit of an over reaction to people talking about foreskin removal.

Looks like my comedy got into their skin. Their foreskin. But I get it. It is more than just a ‘sensitive’ issue. It’s a part as well.

Yeah seriously, that’s my closing line. I didn’t really think the idea of writing this thing through but I’m here so I’ll publish it. Hopefully, we’ll do better next time.

You didn’t, did you? I’m sure most of you’ll went, ‘Why should a man tell me what to do?’

Well if you’re one of them, you are a part of the problem. And I’ll tell you why.

I hail from a family of strong independent men. Men who never hit their wives. Men who never hit their children. Men who never accepted dowry. Call it tradition or genetics, this was passed on to me.

Me, like all men of my family believe that women can do whatever they want to. And the right to do so isn’t ours to give them. It has been, is, will always be their call. By means of this explanation, I assume I am not a chauvinist. Neither are any other men in my family.

But my inhibitions were soon shattered. Because I’ll tell you what, the main problem is with this new sect of ‘women rights activists’ who will cry foul and play the victim card at any given time. Who will call me a sexist for calling my best friend, who is also a man, a bitch in good fun. Who will take offense on songs like ‘Balam Pichkari’ and say shit like the song is a symbol of male dominance because that is what ‘pichkari’ means.

These women will never travel to a village to help the poorer women. These women will stand up and shout slogans against men while demeaning house wives for what they’re doing. These women will sit in their upper middle class to very fucken rich houses and cry death to men, while having made sure their husband got a BMW as a ‘present for marriage’ and ‘not dowry’. That’s like saying ‘hey I got raped but it wasn’t rape because I was in the mood for sex anyway.’

And this class of women aren’t alone. They are backed by the new age rich men who have studied in Harvard/Oxford/My Father is pretty loaded institute of pretentiousness/IIMs (for low self esteem people). These guys come up with black and white videos on any event related to women and give statements like ‘We are sorry, women. On behalf of all the men, we accept everything wrong with you is our fault’ while a sad tone plays on the piano in the background.

Really? I get it, the stars do it for becoming famous, but at the cost of feeding this bull shit to a generation of youngsters who at one point were certain Roadies was the best they could do in life? Is your need to be cool really worth all of this?

Tell you what, your form feminism is a failed ideology. It will never get close to even understanding the problem, let alone solving it and making the world a better place to live in.

This is how stupid you sound.

The real problem is the system, not men. Right now you must be thinking ‘but it was men that created the rules’, hold on to that thought. It was women who backed it.

It is generally the mother in law that has an issue with the daughter in law taking up a job. It is generally the mother who has an issue with her daughter wearing small clothes. People say shit like menstruating women should not be allowed into the temples, it is the women who stop each other. If you’ll were really that righteous as you’ll claim to be, you’ll would have just carried on and done it anyway and before anyone could notice, the practice would have vanished. But no. And who is to blame for this? MEN?

I know the above is an over simplification of women’s issues and it doesn’t go to explain what the real issue is. Guess what ladies, that’s how shallow and stupid your version of feminism sounds.

I’m not denying there are asshole men in the world. But I believe it is time women understood that it isn’t men alone that are causing the entire inequality charade. Women are equally to be blamed for this. It is the system which is faulting women, it is the system which is pushing them back again and again. And if this modern day fuck all version of feminism is your answer to it, then good luck fighting for it till the end of the world because nothing’s going to change with this.

The only way change is possible when women accept the fact that men aren’t the enemy. The system is. And together we can overthrow it.

Being an atheist has many advantages. One of them is when you’re jerking off, you can be sure that no one’s watching you. Unless you’re doing it in a crowded bus. Because that’s not how it works. There are somethings atheism can’t hide, for every thing else there’s master card.

But no one really talks about the downside to atheism. The fact that you don’t believe in god comes with a few terms and conditions. And one of them is you have to believe that there are no ghosts too – which, I think is messed up.

Because it is human nature to be afraid of the dark. Or at least it is my nature. And I freak out in the dark. But what freaks me out more than the idea of ghosts is my defense mechanism.

Let’s say its 3 am in the night (which allegedly is the Satan’s time). I’m just doing some random stuff on my computer. I see a movement on the corner of my eye. Now lets assume it is a ghost that moved. Obviously that is scary.

But my defense mechanism to that is to not look in the direction of the ghost. That’s right. I think not looking at it will protect me from it. Its a good thing I’m not in the army.

Major: ‘Soldier, the Pakistanis are coming.’

Me: ‘I have an excellent idea. A strategy that’ll win us the war.’

Major: ‘Go ahead. What is it?’

Me: ‘Let’s not look at them.’

Major: …..

Me: ….

Major: ….

Me: …

Times of India’s first page next day: ‘Army major shoots his own soldier.’

And here’s the messed up part. I know this isn’t helping. I know the ghost might still come and kill me. But I still do keep doing this.

Even the ghost must be like ‘What a fucktard!’

The moral of the story is face your fears. Because if you don’t, then you won’t see it coming.

Dinosaurs have always fascinated me. Maybe because unlike most of you’ll, Titanic wasn’t my first English film, it was Jurassic Park.

And The first time I watched the film, I freaked out. The scene where a fellow scientist’s hand comforts the lead actress was good till you realised that it was just the hand comforting her because the rest of the scientist had been eaten by a dinosaur.

Now, I’m not saying science is wrong. But honestly, none of us have seen or met dinosaurs. All we know about them comes from their bones that were found under layers of soil. Just kidding. All we know comes from the Jurassic Park series.

But what if (yes, this is where the absurdity begins) dinosaurs were nice people. What if all they wanted to do was cuddle? And be happy? And invest in an SBI fixed deposit so their child could go to a nice school after they died? #SarUthaKeJio #ProductPlacement

Awwww!

Now, I know what you guys must be thinking. “Leave science alone? WHAT RUBBISH”. We conveniently did that when we were killing Galileo for saying ‘bro I think the world is round’ or something like that. So why not just think about it for a harmless (yet awesome) blog?

So, back to my theory. Ever looked at a Tyrannosaurs Rex? It has such nice and small hands. And if we go by everything we have seen (A USP that both god and dinosaurs lack), anything with small hands is good – Babies, people who have small hands because of polio (because handicapped people are always nice), rabbits, squirrels, Sid from Ice Age. Such nice people.

But I’m not telling all dinosaurs were nice people. Some of them might have been right wing people. Who would pretend to be vegetarian and fuck up everyone else. Those long-necked basterds that Steven Spielberg’s movie portrayed in such good light might actually have been the assholes that fucked it up.

Because lets talk facts. (ROFL). Anything with a long neck is an asshole. Snakes (their entire body is a long neck and the only thing they are good for is creating medicine that cures their OWN FUCKEN BITE), giraffes, ostriches, ducks, the sea monster that attacks Hanuman in the cartoon Ramayan that was shown on Cartoon Network on every Diwali between 2003 and 2009, George W Bush (no seriously, look it up).

MORE EVIDENCE!!!!

To take my argument further, those vegetarian dinosaurs with the long necks are the Gujaratis of the dinosaur world. Because they eat vegetarian food, sleep early and spit on white girls (seriously have no idea what the last part means). But we all know when shit went down in 2002, the dhokla eating people didn’t spare anyone. And maybe, there was no meteorite that hit the earth. Maybe it was just these guys going and killing the cuddly and nice T-Rexs and their families.

To my faithful readers, this might be my last blog post. I might be lynched by a mob, dragged onto a street and might be beaten to death after this blog post by a group of people whom you might associate me with.

Now, then, the Sikh community *dramatic pause* has been a part of civilization for roughly 500 years. Of which for over 300 years, it has been an organised religion.

From serving free meals at Gurudwaras, to serving free meals in areas affected by ISIS, to serving free meals in drought/flood/earthquake hit areas and giving the world Daler Mehendi, the community has always been the front runner in doing good things. And hey, the meals come with no obligations to convert into Sikhism once you’re done eating.

But as a Sikh physically and an atheist mentally, there are times where I start questioning this cute little religion that provides food and some times blows up flights and assassinates the prime minister, for whatever reasons.

Now, every Sikh who gets baptized (amrit chakna), has to follow a certain set of rules which include cooking for yourself, following a prayer time table and yes, having the 5 Ks.

The five Ks, which most of you’ll learnt in the Hindi lesson ‘Guru Nanak’ in your 9th standard, are five things that a Sikh must carry on him at all times. Fair enough, every religion has rules. So does Sikhism.

Here’s where it starts messing with my head. The first K stands for Kesh – Growing facial hair. And the rule makers wanted to be sure that we’re just not growing hair but combing them. So we added the second K, the Kanga – a small wooden comb. Still nothing extra ordinary. Seems pretty routine, right?

Then the rule makers went one step further and said, ‘Hey bro, here are two more Ks – the Kada (an arm guard) for self-defense and the Kirpan (a dagger). Considering that the Sikhs were at war with the Mughals and were expecting sudden attacks, this made perfect sense. Hats off.

And then, the person who was writing the rules decided to just have fun. He said, “Let’s mess around a little bit.” And just as the announcer of the rules was going out to tell the world about the four must-have things (God it sounds like Scoopwhoop), the creator of rules called him back and said, “Listen, add this, Chaddi pehen na mat bhoolna,” and hence the fifth K was added. The Kacha, which means an underwear.

WHAT?!

This is what bothers me the most, ours is the only holy book in the world that says ‘bro, don’t forget to wear your underwear.’ How dumb do you think we were man that you felt the rule ‘wear an underwear’ should be a part of your holy book?

The announcer also would’ve been like, “Sir you sure about this one?”

“YES ABSOLUTELY. As time passes, people might forget that wearing an underwear is necessary. The only way to get them to wear it is to have it in the holy book.”

Wow.

I mean look at Hinduism, their holy books were talking about complicated shit like ‘people should be divided into four Varnas’. the Christians were making rules about converting people and shit by getting them drunk and the Muslims were also up to something, I guess. And here’s us, making rules like ‘underwear compulsory’.

Just kidding. (Although I did see that ‘what the fuck’ expression on your face). It’s not about ice cream.

This blog is not a rant about how shit love is or how pathetic Valentines Day is because I am single. Nah.

Instead it is about how February has been romanticized (English swag niggas) in our heads right from when we were children. That’s right, and it wasn’t just for February 14th. It was for the over all picture.

Because as kids, even though we had no clue what it meant, we all knew February had fewer days that normal months and even when it got an extra day, it would still be fewer than the other months.

Doesn’t really feel like a big deal now but figuring that out – particularly in my school – felt like a big deal back then.

You know why there’s a photo of a man leaping here? Because it’s a leap year mother fuckers! Get it? Leap. LEAP. LEEEAAPP!!!!

And I remember this one leap year, when I was little, a classmate of mine was late to class and the second he came in, he shouted ‘THIS IS AN EXTRA DAY WE HAVE TO STUDY. OUR SENIORS DIDN’T HAVE TO GO THROUGH THIS!’

And we were all like “Fuccckkkk!!!”

No sorry, we were kids.

We were all like “Whatever kids say when they are amused”. (I can’t seem to recall what we said as kids when we were amused. So used to ‘shit’, ‘fuck’ or ‘bhuh that’s insane’, I can’t remember what I used to say when I was amused as a child. Let me know in the comments what you’d say.) *Optimistic Blogger*

That guy’s doing his MS in USA now. Surprise, surprise.

Anyway, you further romanticize the month when you grow up because hey, in college, this is the time where even the ugliest people we know get confident and try to ask someone out. And I get to say that because I am ugly. #FakeModestyToMakeRudeComment

And for some reason, after the holidays of December and the hangovers/failed resolutions of January, it is February that tells you, ‘Hey it’s alright. This year isn’t that bad after all. There’s love in it, it isn’t that long and if you’re single, well fuck you because happiness isn’t for you’.

It is February that gets little kids ready for their exams and the big bankers ready for their audits. It is the only time of the year where people from the same group can have hot tea and cold coffee in the same outing without the other section telling them the climate isn’t suitable for it.

Just imagine facing March directly after January, so bloody hectic!!

They say good things come in small packages and in our cases, I believe February is that small package.